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visible deeds of music
visible deeds of
m u s i ca r t and music from
wagner to cage

simon shaw-miller
yale university press
new haven & london
Copyright © 2002 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.

Small sections of Chapter 1 appeared in the review essay ‘‘Sounding Out,’’ Oxford Art
Journal 20, no. 1 (1997), 105–9. A section of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘‘Skriabin and
Obukhov—Mysterium and La Livre de vie: The Concept of the Total Work of Art,’’ in
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 1, no. 3 (December 2000; e-journal:
www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/journal/december/skria.html). An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared
as ‘‘Instruments of Desire: Musical Morphology in the Early Work of Picasso,’’ Musical
Quarterly 76, no. 4 (Winter 1992), 442–64. An earlier version of Chapter 6 appeared as
‘‘Concerts of Everyday Living’’: Cage, Barthes and Fluxus: Interdisciplinarity and Inter-
Media Events,’’ in a special number of Art History, entitled Image-Music-Text 19, no. 1
(March 1996), 1–25. Music examples 5.3–5.8 were created by Robert Michael Weiss and first
published in the catalogue Josef Matthias Hauer, 80 Jahre Zwölftonmusik (Kulturamt der
Stadt Wiener Neustadt, 1999) for the J. M. Hauer exhibition in Wiener Neustadt, April 1999.
They are reproduced by courtesy of Josef Matthias Hauer Studio Robert Michael Weiss,
Vienna. Music example 5.12 was made for this publication by Robert Michael Weiss,
transcribed from the first recording made by Victor Sokolowski on LP Phillips 6599
333 (1973).

Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Times Roman with Meta types by Tseng
Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Edwards Brothers, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Simon, 1960–
Visible deeds of music : art and music from Wagner to Cage / Simon Shaw-Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-08374-2 (alk. paper)
1. Art and music—History—19th century. 2. Art and music—History—20th century.
I. Title.
ML3849 .S47 2002
780'.07—dc21 2001008006
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee
on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to a most harmonious sound:
‘‘LA!’’
(Lindsey and Aniella)
and a silence:
in memoriam
(John Raisin, 1938–1999)
contents
Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

o n e Ut Pictura Musica: Interdisciplinarity, Art, and

Music 1

t w o ‘‘Deeds of Music Made Visible’’: Wagner, the

Gesamtkunstwerk, and the Birth of the Modern 36

t h r e e Instruments of Desire: Musical Morphology in

Picasso’s Cubism 89

f o u r Quasi Una Musica: Kupka and Klee, Music, and

the Idea of Abstraction 121

f i v e ‘‘Out of Tune’’: Hauer’s Legacy and the Aesthetics

of Minimalism in Art and Music 163
s i x A Chorus of Voices: Seeing Music in Cage and
Fluxus, the Birth of the Postmodern 208

Notes 245

Index 283
preface

The absolute arts are a sad modern impertinence. Everything is falling apart.
There is no organization to foster all the arts together as Art.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

The relationships between music and visual art in the first half of the twentieth
century are the subject of this book. From Richard Wagner to John Cage, I ex-
plore a number of themes that emerge in the consideration of modernism on the
nexus of sight and sound, the spatial and the temporal. This work is not an at-
tempt to cover all instances of art and music’s interrelations in this extraordinary
period. Rather, it addresses the media bias of discussions of modernism through
consideration of a number of key moments—between c. 1860 and c. 1960, when
the purism of modernism (especially in the writings of Clement Greenberg and
Michael Fried), in terms of definition through media specificity, is contrasted
with the more hybrid and ‘‘theatrical’’ manifestations of practices that operate
under the ‘‘surface’’ of this paradigm of modernism.
Chapter 1 raises a number of issues in relation to interdisciplinary study and
aims to differentiate inter- from cross- and multidisciplinary research. It takes up
the philosopher Jerrold Levinson’s discussion of hybridity (into the categories
x
preface

‘‘juxtaposition,’’ ‘‘synthesis,’’ and ‘‘transformation’’). Through the filter of a num-

ber of discussions that use Gotthold Lessing’s Laocoön and his differentiation of
the arts on the basis of temporal and spatial characteristics, this chapter looks at
ways that art and music have been historically separated from each other. The
main argument can be summarized thus: (1) music operates as an exemplar of
autonomy for the visual arts within the paradigm of modernism; or (2) music con-
versely operates as an exemplar of connection for art practices within the para-
digm of postmodernism (and to an extent with premodern practice). In the first
statement, music is to be understood as mere sound, what has been called ‘‘music
alone.’’1 In the second, music is to be understood as a field of activities, a discourse
or discursive practice.
The contention is that notions of media purity in modernism are the histori-
cal exception. The conception of fluid boundaries between the sonoric and the
visual (as indeed also between the textual) is a closer reflection of artistic prac-
tices throughout history, than the seeking out and patrolling of borders on the
basis of time, space, or media alone.
Chapter 2 addresses Richard Wagner’s music and ideas at the time of Charles
Baudelaire’s definition of modernity. Wagner argues that each separate art form
tends to extend itself (its power) to its limits and cannot pass this limit without
losing itself in incomprehension. This move to, or beyond, the ontological limits
is the enterprise of modern art. The Gesamtkunstwerk, or art work of the future
as he most often expresses it, is a means of containing excess and safeguarding
meaning. Baudelaire’s response to Wagner was to recognize that here was an art
that truly threatened the long-affirmed supremacy of poetry: poetry becomes a
form of protomusic. The Gesamtkunstwerk is positioned as the ‘‘end of art,’’ in
as much as it is the unification and synthesis of all the individual arts (under, how-
ever, the banner of music). It is the most modern in its lack of an antique model.
Greenberg’s response to this same crisis was rather to build up each art’s de-
fensive barriers so that ‘‘each art would, to be sure, narrow its area of compe-
tence, but at the same time it would make its possession of this area all the more
secure.’’2
For Greenberg, then, the conditions of representation are central to artistic
practice, so that art becomes its own subject; this is not so much a stylistic shift
as a paradigmatic transformation. Art does this in order to arrest the drift that
Wagner identifies in the extension of the arts beyond their limits (into unintelli-
gibility). This act of purification, ironically, moves painting toward music (as it
conversely moves away from the sculptural and the literary). Although contrary
to Wagner and the conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk, Greenberg’s modernism
pursues a strategy of exclusion. The influence of Wagner’s aesthetic is briefly dis-
cussed in relation to Aleksandr Scriabin and Nikolay Obukhov, with a note on
 xi
preface

Olivier Messiaen. Consideration of these figures shows that at the birth of moder-
nity, one powerful strain of practices stands in antithesis to the purism of formalist
modernism, in its pull to achieve unification.
Chapter 3 considers a central defining plank of the modernist canon: cubism,
specifically the cubism of Pablo Picasso. Although for Greenberg, Edouard
Manet was the first modernist, cubism marks a fundamental shift in the develop-
ment of modern art. Greenberg discusses cubism in terms of formal innovation,
and it has been seen by many to mark a fundamental shift in the history of art:
from a perceptual to a conceptual emphasis. However, if we consider a contex-
tual understanding, focusing on music, we can show conceptual contact with a
wide range of cultural issues. Cubism’s concern with traditional subject matter,
as a vehicle for that formal innovation in technique, is important, but it is not
the whole story. Music and musical instruments, in Picasso’s cubist works, both
signify Idea, rather than the visible particular (indeed its invisibility gives music
its power), and through musical objects (instruments) other extravisual elements
such as touch and hearing, and physical bodies, are played on within the rules
of a complex game. The subject matter of these works is far from neutral. Such
corps sonores resonate outside the confines of the frame.
Greenberg’s ideas lead to (and from) abstraction, indeed were formulated in
the 1940s within the context of abstraction’s identification as avant-garde, and
as such form the elite vehicle that maintains superiority over kitsch or academi-
cism. Here music again acts as a powerful agent of meaning. Following Wagner,
this is achieved not via the mind but via the feelings, through the instinct of the
artist. It is apparent that music means something profound, but its significance
lies in the subject rather than the object. In Chapter 4, the role of music in the
work of František Kupka, a little discussed but important early abstract artist, is
contrasted with that of Paul Klee. Music for Kupka is a transcendental signifier,
a re-presentation of the will, the spirit, the idea. For Klee, music is to be under-
stood as an organic, and already cultural, metaphor of growth, creation, and the
forces of nature. For Klee music was principally seen as a way to emphasize the
dimension of time, and therefore change, in visual art, as against Lessing’s divi-
sions. Klee’s work does not pursue or reflect a simple teleology of modernism
but is a more circular, essentially an experimental rubric.
The Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer is the main focus of Chapter 5.
Like Klee, Hauer stands to one side of the modernist paradigm. Hauer’s music
and ideas have much in common with Greenbergian modernism, for example, in
the attempt to develop a new metamusical language. Yet if we look in detail at
his little discussed aesthetic, if we distinguish its specificity—in contrast to the
more familiar tactic of describing it as an inferior form of serialism—we find
not so much a minor modernist, but rather a challenging, somewhat anachronis-
xii
preface

tic figure, a figure whose aesthetic, by virtue of its deviance from this paradigm,
is conceptually close to minimalism, the first art movement to challenge Green-
bergian ideology in the 1960s. This chapter necessarily contains a good deal of
technical discussion due to the unfamiliarity of Hauer’s ideas, especially for the
English-language reader. The argument considers Hauer’s ideas in relation to the
developments from dodecaphony to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s notion of moment
form to minimalism, in both music and visual art. It relates Hauer’s aesthetic to a
concern with three basic categories, first employed by the musicologist Jonathan
Bernard in relation to minimalism: (1) the avoidance of aleatoricism, (2) the em-
phasis on surface, and (3) the concern with disposition rather than composition.
The final chapter brings back the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, but in the con-
text of John Cage’s work, which is in many ways antithetical to the idea in its
Wagnerian guise. Here the concern is with silence over amplification, coexistence
over synthesis; music does not sublimate the other arts (nor, in Greenberg’s terms,
provide them with a ‘‘notion of purity derived from the example of music’’).
Volume does not drown out the other arts’ voices. Rather, it is through Cage’s
aesthetic of silence that the other arts can be seen to be a part of the discourse
of music—textual, visual, and theatrical. They are already part of the fabric of
music, part of the chorus of voices that make up the concept ‘‘music.’’ This allows
us to relate back to the initial discussion of the separation of the arts and its empha-
sis in Greenbergian modernism. But in the face of a post-Cagian (postmodernist)
culture, we are made more aware of the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and
the necessity to rethink relationships.
acknowledgments

I should like to express my thanks to a number of individuals who have com-

mented on the contents of this book in its various states of development (who are
of course in no part responsible for its faults): Paul Binski, John Covach, Thomas
Crow, Jonathan Impett, James Lawson, Richard Leppert, Donald Mitchell,
Marcia Pointon, Antony Sellors, Peter Vergo. I also owe a debt of gratitude to
Alessio Antonielli, whose calm and conscientious approach to the drudgery of
bureaucracy saw the consolidation of the illustrative material through the later
stages. Thank you. Also to Suzanne Reynolds of Honeychurch Associates for
her care and interest. Sylvia Carlyle’s way with the Web helped me tie up some
last-minute bibliographic queries, for which I’m most grateful.
Any contemporary researcher on J. M. Hauer will at some point owe a con-
siderable debit to Robert M. Weiß of the Joseph Matthias Hauer Konservatorium
in Wiener Neustadt. I most certainly do, and I thank him for his help, patience
(when the technical details of Hauer’s approach took time to sink in), and gener-
ous friendship over the years.
To single out any of my colleagues in the School of History of Art at Birkbeck
would be inappropriate, as all of them provide a most supportive and intellectu-
ally stimulating environment in which to work (not least the School’s adminis-
trative and support staff ).
xiv
acknowledgments

As a dyslexic I am sensible of a second-hand relationship to language, that it

has passed through others’ minds on its way to me. I hope I have not misrepre-
sented them in my attempts to refashion and reapply them. That my thoughts have
achieved passable English is largely a result of a number of timely interventions.
My wife, Lindsey, who is always my first editor, mainly instigated these, with
patience and sympathy. She has shared my interests and in discussion helped to
form them into clearer prose. My ‘‘second’’ editor, Harry Haskell at Yale, has
likewise been most supportive and above all enthusiastic for this project since
he solicited its embryonic (and rather different) synopsis. The diligent and sym-
pathetic copyediting of Laura Jones Dooley saved me from many embarrassing
errors. Thank you for your care and for providing me with (at least on paper) an
American accent.
If I might borrow and rephrase the words of Michel Chion: this book might
not be complete, nor immune to criticism, but at least it exists!
one
ut pictura musica
i n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r i t y, a r t , a n d m u s i c

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.—Walter Pater

Comparing the resources of totally different arts, one art learning from
another, can only be successful and victorious if not merely the externals,
but also the principles are learned.
—Wassily Kandinsky

Novalis: ‘‘This is waking, that is a dream, this belongs to the body, that to
the spirit, this belongs to space and distance, that to time and duration. But
space spills over into time, as the body into the soul, so that one cannot be
measured without the other. I want to exert myself to find a different kind
of measurement.’’
—Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

Our words for the practices of art and music have classical roots. The Greek word
technē and the Latin ars both originally related closely to notions of skill. Technē
included a specific form, mousike technē, which signified the ‘‘art of the Muses.’’
2
ut pictura musica

However, the word technē was often omitted in Greek usage, and mousike on
its own stood for ‘‘art of the Muses.’’ And although this is the root of our word
music, it was first a concept signifying any art form over which the Muses pre-
sided: poetry, song, dance, astronomy.1 Mousike did not, therefore, signify in a
narrow sense what we might now think of as ‘‘music’’; it is not used in Greek as
a term for a solely auditory art form until at least the fourth century b.c.
The visual arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, activities that can be
distinguished in part by their devotion to aesthetic issues above utility and craft,
appear not to have been thought of as a group before the fifth century b.c. In-
deed, in antiquity it would be more accurate to designate all such ‘‘visual’’ cultural
practices under the concept ‘‘craft’’ rather than art. Similarly, the artist had no
social status above other artisans, until in the fifth century art was developed as a
more distinct activity, although this was then a relatively subtle distinction. One
of the definitive contentions that emerged at this time was the relationship of the
arts to necessity and luxury. Painting and music were famously classified by Plato
(against the more hedonistic views of some of his contemporaries) as luxuries,
but with the proviso that elements of them could rise above this material status to
provide benefit to the soul; a link is made between beauty and moral worth: ‘‘ugli-
ness of form and bad rhythm and disharmony are akin to poor quality expression
and character, and their opposites are akin to and represent good character and
discipline.’’2 This statement is part of a general discussion of education in which
Plato is concerned to promote exposure only to the good. Both music and the
graphic arts share rhythm and harmony as the means to produce beauty.
For Plato, central to the classification and purpose of the arts was the con-
cept of imitation (mimesis), as this relates directly to his notion of the eidos, the
realm of suprasensible reality, which is distinct from the eidolon, which is the
impression of this reality based on likeness (eikon). The fact that the visual arts
might be more than mere imitation is not of concern to Plato, and indeed for him,
only certain types of music or musical modes (harmoniai ) were acceptable or
beneficial to the soul, and thus appropriate to education. In this it was impor-
tant to distinguish the intellectual principles of harmony, for example, and not to
surrender to their more sensuous elements. The close relationship between tone
and word (in mousike)—the invariable length and pitch of Greek syllables from
which the sound was related and developed—linked sound and meaning through
the medium of the word. However, music gradually became more independent
of the word. By the middle of the fifth century instrumental improvisations had
developed, often based on imitations of natural sounds rather than words, and it
was to this that Plato largely responded in his attempts to promote and prohibit
certain types of aesthetic development. The relationship between music and the
word is an issue we shall take up again in the next chapter.
 3
ut pictura musica

For Aristotle, all arts are arts of imitation. He wrote in the Poetics: ‘‘Epic and
tragic poetry, comedy too, dithyrambic poetry, and most music composed for the
flute and lyre, can all be described in general terms as forms of imitation or rep-
resentation.’’ Here music is in service to the word and aims to represent ‘‘men’s
characters and feelings and actions.’’3 Music is seen to function as a natural sign
system, one grounded in imitation. In The Politics, he characterizes rhythm and
melody as aesthetic elements best able to produce imitations of such passions as
anger, courage, and other qualities of character.
Neoclassical thinkers tended to think of music and imitation in narrower terms,
more suited to the visual arts alone, as representations in a medium that shares
properties in common with the thing represented. The medieval division of the
arts into the seven ‘‘liberal’’ arts consisted of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arith-
metic, geometry, astronomy, and music. In the fifteenth century the conceptual
separation or combination of art and science as two different activities would not
have been a part of the artist’s project. For Leonardo da Vinci, ‘‘art’’ referred to
something like skill and ‘‘science’’ meant something like knowledge.4
Until the seventeenth century ‘‘art’’ still included such varied activities as
mathematics, medicine, and angling, but then it came to signify a more special-
ized group of skills that had not before been formally grouped together—namely,
drawing, painting, engraving, and sculpture. Up to the eighteenth century it was
common to discuss painting and sculpture, music and dance but not to speak of
‘‘art’’ as a general term.5
Indeed, our common use of ‘‘art’’ did not come into being until the nineteenth
century, along with the distinction between art and craft, artist and artisan. Alex-
ander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) coined the word aesthetics in Reflections
on Poetry in 1735 and used the word slightly later as the title of his two-volume
work Aesthetica (1750–58). But in the reconsideration of music’s place in aes-
thetics that took place in the eighteenth century, Aristotle’s terms of reference—
music as the imitation of the passions or as the sonic signifier of the passions—
again emerged as important elements in the debate. Principal among these terms
was the notion of music as a natural sign system, as part of a general represen-
tational theory. Abbé Jean-Baptiste Dubos wrote early in the century: ‘‘Whereof
as the painter imitates the strokes and colours of nature, in like manner the musi-
cian imitates the tones, accents, sighs, and inflextions of the voice; and in short all
those sounds, by which nature herself expresses her sentiments and passions.’’6
The dominant tradition of aesthetics up to the eighteenth century was not one
that aimed to pursue generic differences, seeking out and patrolling the bor-
ders between the arts. Rather, it was primarily concerned with the issue of re-
semblance, that which was shared by art forms, the ‘‘sister arts.’’ Horace’s (65–
8 b.c.) phrase ‘‘ut pictura poesis’’ (as is painting, so is poetry) derives from the
4
ut pictura musica

Ars poetica (361). It was attributed to Simonides (556–468 b.c.) by Plutarch in

the form of ‘‘painting is mute poetry and poetry a speaking picture’’ (Moralia,
346). The analogy remained powerful, even when challenged, while the arts were
thought of as essentially imitative. But with the romantics the arts were thought
of more as expression than imitation, and this analogy was replaced by another,
what we can call ‘‘ut pictura musica’’ (as is music, so is painting).
I do not intend to provide a historiography of the concepts of music and visual
art. Here it is enough to stress that they are mutable concepts; not only have they
changed their meaning on the verbal level, but such surface changes of meaning
signify deeper underlying cultural movements and trends. For it is useful to con-
sider the difference between music and the visual arts as a matter of degree, not
of kind. In so doing we are forced to reflect on scholarly practice, to see the va-
lidity of traditional disciplinary premises as historical, ideological conventions,
not as natural unequivocal boundaries. This is not the same as saying that there
are no differences between art and music or that such distinctions are false. It is
the very power of these distinctions, to construct ways of seeing, that we need to
remember. The issue of difference is one of constant negotiation.
This might appear at first sight to be a rather ill-judged overstatement, but I take
support from W. J. T. Mitchell’s convincing arguments deployed against simi-
lar issues of difference in poetry and painting in his important work Iconology:
Image, Text, Ideology (1986).7
The historical material I deal with in this book takes the form of a series of case
studies within the period of history now commonly termed modernist (c. 1860–
1960). The theoretical characterization of this phase of history was marked by an
attempt to (re)establish the ‘‘essential’’ identity of each branch of cultural practice,
each art form. But more than this, a strong sense of censure was (is) attached to
the project: that through the ‘‘self evident truth’’ of the ‘‘natural’’ boundaries be-
tween the arts, the issue becomes as much a moral one—that the arts should only
‘‘concern themselves with certain formal characteristics’’—as it was a merely
neutral formal requirement—that they ‘‘can only express certain things within
these essential borders.’’ Yet as Mitchell points out, ‘‘There would be no need to
say that the genres should not be mixed if they could not be mixed.’’8 In other
words, the definition of modernism was as much an ideological tendency as it
was a ‘‘scientific’’ drawing of demarcation lines. Indeed, the very notion that a
‘‘scientific’’ method can be an appropriate explicatory model must be questioned.
Rather, we should consider music and art relations to be a result of particular
historical formations, dependent on relations of production, reproduction, and
sociopolitical forces, which are transformed within history. I do not simply wish
to oppose attempts at single unitary systems of thinking, such as certain notions
of modernism, that attempt to account for all similarities and differences. And I
 5
ut pictura musica

cannot hope to explore all the ideological issues that underlie the approaches I
discuss in these pages. Instead, in the following chapters, I argue that it is more
appropriate to see attempts at systemization and demarcation in the arts as his-
torically grounded, as part of a dialogue, one that questions at the level of both
theory and practice. I provide a series of case studies that complicate the concep-
tion of modernist art practice as grounded in unique, practice-specific essences.
In doing this I am aware that issues of class and gender, among others, could be
developed from the discussion, issues bound up with the social history of art. My
intention is to expose the intellectual basis of art and music relationships within
notions of modernism—a level of theory that is diminished within social and
political analysis—and to make sonoric concerns visible. In this way ideological
notions can become apparent and open to question, even if all social ramifications
cannot be exposed here.
So let us briefly explore the nature of the ‘‘essential’’ identity of music and
visual art. I begin with the premise that there is no single essential or sufficient
defining difference between them, although that is not to say that there are not
necessary characteristics.
We have seen that in antiquity the boundaries between the arts were not as
they now are. But one of the most famous accounts of demarcation, indeed per-
haps the first extended attempt to define distinctive and ‘‘appropriate’’ spheres
of action between art forms, a work that characterizes artistic medium and is
the source for modernist assumptions of the uniqueness and autonomy of the
individual arts, a work written in the eighteenth century but based on antique
practices, is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laokoon: Oder, Über die Grenzen der
Malerei und Poesie (1766).9 Using the Late Hellenistic sculpture of Laocoön
and his two sons being attacked by serpents, Lessing follows Johann Joachim
Winckelmann in promoting the assertion that classical art is invariably tranquil
and static, concerned with the presentation of flawless beauty (fig. 1.1).10 The
display of strong emotion or impassioned movement would distort the purity of
form, he argues, and in the visual arts formal considerations must always control
expression. Poetry, by contrast, could display strong emotion without disrupting
form.Virgil’s evocation of the scream in his account of the death of Laocoön ‘‘has
a powerful appeal to the ear, no matter what its effect on the eye.’’11 Although
the Laocoön is concerned with poetry and painting, Lessing’s characterization
of poetry as a temporal art and painting as a spatial art can be applied equally to
music and painting (the ear and the eye). It was Lessing’s intention in the planned
second part of this work to consider music in relation to poetry, and in the third
part the relation of dance to music and the different genres of poetry, one with
the other. Both these further parts, however, remained incomplete at his death
in 1781.
 [To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]

1.1 Hagesandros, Athenodoros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, The Laocoön Group, c. 175–
150 b.c., height 242 cm. Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican. Monumenti Musei e Gallerie
Pontificie, Rome
 7
ut pictura musica

LAOCOÖN

Taking up the antique view that music is seen to function as a natural sign system,
one grounded in imitation, a useful starting point for our discussion is the work
of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86, grandfather of the composer
Felix). He was a contemporary and close friend of Lessing, whose ideas had an
impact (negative in the case of music) on Lessing’s formulations. Mendelssohn’s
essay ‘‘Hauptgrundsätze der schönen Wissenschaften und Künste’’ (On the main
principles of the fine arts and sciences) of 1757, revised in 1771, is in part an at-
tempt to separate the arts on semiotic grounds.12 What Lessing and Mendelssohn
share is a particular conception of mimesis. In the case of painting, a highly mi-
metic art, there are certain physical properties, such as color and contour, which
it shares with the original. However, for precisely this reason its efficacy is re-
duced, for it partakes of the physical nature of the original and therefore incurs
the same restrictions as the original. A more effective mimesis, a representation
to the imagination of ideas, would be one of ideas itself, where materiality is left
behind. This is a major reason for the supersession of poetry and its use of meta-
phor over the visual arts: if painting adopts a similar strategy—allegory—it is
merely an inferior form of poetry, what Lessing calls a ‘‘speaking picture.’’13
Both Lessing and Mendelssohn’s work was part of a more general interest in
systematizing the arts; their work aims to provide a theoretical structure of aes-
thetics as a hierarchy of rules. They tend toward a definition of the ‘‘essence’’ of
each art form in order to make artistic communication more autonomous, more
transparent. The purpose of art was characterized as the presentation to the imagi-
nation (or soul) of an intuitive representation of the object, to elicit pleasure. The
arts can then be compared in terms of the means to this end, characterized in
terms of the different semiotic media they employ. Music, for Mendelssohn, is a
natural semiotic, as opposed to language, which is an arbitrary one:

The signs by means of which an object is expressed can be either natural or arbitrary.
They are natural if the combination of the sign with the subject matter signified is
grounded in the very properties of what is designated. . . . Those signs, on the other
hand, that by their very nature have nothing in common with the designated subject
matter . . . are called arbitary. . . . The fine sciences [arts], by which poetry and rheto-
ric are understood, express objects by means of arbitrary signs, perceptible sounds,
and letters.14

According to Mendelssohn, both the visual arts and music are natural sym-
bols, or sign systems, as opposed to poetry, which employs arbitrary symbols.
The arts are further distinguished by the sense organ to which they appeal, which
separates music from the visual arts. In turn, the visual arts can be subdivided
8
ut pictura musica

according to the arrangement of their parts—in time or space (the only temporal
visual art for Mendelssohn is dance). This focus on media-based rules separates
aesthetic experience, as we have seen, from other experiences aiming to facilitate
transparency between aesthetic object and the subject.
The understanding of how the arts combine, having been separated by such a
taxonomy, follows similar structural lines. Mendelssohn argues that there must
always be a dominant partner, for if this were not the case a clash between ‘‘es-
sences’’ could occur, causing confusion. For example, in song, music must always
take second place to poetry; in opera, to drama. Wagner, as we shall see, took a
rather different view.
According to the notes for the planned second volume of Laocoön, Lessing,
while sharing many ideas with Mendelssohn, differed in his view of music. For
these notes suggest that music is, at least in part, an arbitrary sign system, as
it, too, frees the imagination.15 This view, which allies music and poetry, was to
become dominant by the end of the century.
Autonomous music, separated from poetry, was viewed at first as something
of a loose cannon. The mimetic view of music was, throughout this time, pro-
gressively diminished, which led to music’s assuming a different place within the
aesthetic hierarchy. One of the clearest examples of this change, toward the end of
the century, is to be found in British rather than German theorizing. The Scottish
thinker Adam Smith sees music as a primarily expressive medium: ‘‘The effect
of instrumental Music upon the mind has been called expression. . . . Whatever
effect it produces is the immediate effect of that melody and harmony, and not
of something else which is signified and suggested by them: they in fact signify
and suggest nothing.’’16
For Smith there is a decided break between music as a signifier and its (natu-
ral) signified, although for him this is not necessarily a good thing. Moreover,
seen in such terms there was an inherent (Platonic) danger: music free of the con-
trol of words was music free of morality. Legislation was needed to contain this
influence. As Lessing put it in the Laocoön:

We laugh when we hear that among the ancients even the arts were subject to the
civil code. But we are not always right when we do so. Unquestionably, laws must
not exercise any constraint on the sciences, for the ultimate goal of knowledge is
truth. . . . But the ultimate goal of the arts is pleasure, and this pleasure is not indis-
pensable. Hence it may be for the lawmaker to determine what kind of pleasure and
how much of each kind he will permit.17

But not all eighteenth-century minds saw music in such Platonic terms. Some
saw the origin of music in the divine (Orpheus, Apollo, or his biblical counter-
 9
ut pictura musica

part David), but whether music was seen as a nature-derived phenomenon or as

a supernatural gift, both accounts were dependent on mimesis. The view that
music was intimately related to the word or poetry, however, also underwent a
further variation, which acknowledged a trace of the Ursprache. This is an idea
that was later taken up and modified by Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietz-
sche, and Richard Wagner. Here music is not so much a mimic of speech and
natural sounds as an original or fundamental mode of communication that existed
prior to language.18
As the imitative view of music underwent transformation, to a point where ex-
pressive theories replaced mimetic ones, music became an even more effective
paradigm for the other arts. In Germany, with such writers as Jean Paul Richter,
Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Wackenroder, and E. T. A. Hoffmann, within the emer-
gent aesthetic of romanticism, instrumental music became fundamental precisely
because of its arbitrary, suggestive nature. Music was seen now as the least imi-
tative of the arts, and its status was raised to a point where all other arts were re-
quired to aspire to its imprecisely suggestive condition. But this again is a species
of ‘‘sister arts’’ criticism, a focus on commonality, a drawing together of the arts,
and it would be incorrect to give the impression that modernist criticism explic-
itly acknowledged such common ground. Rather, it sought difference, addressing
itself to the ‘‘essential’’ nature of each medium. Here Lessing provided the ground
rules. His essay is of seminal importance, for in a reworking of its central argu-
ments by the American critic Clement Greenberg, in his essay ‘‘Towards a Newer
Laocoon’’ (1940), the essence of modernist art is defined.19 But here first is Less-
ing’s initial discussion and its division of the arts on the basis of the categories of
space and time:

I reason thus: if it is true that in its imitations painting uses completely different
means or signs than does poetry, namely figures [bodies] and colours in space rather
than articulated sounds in time, and if these signs must indisputably bear a suitable
relation to the thing signified, then signs existing in space can express only objects
whose wholes or parts coexist, while signs that follow one another can express only
objects whose wholes or parts are consecutive.
Objects or parts of objects which exist in space are called bodies. Accordingly,
bodies with their visible properties are the true subjects of painting.
Objects or parts of objects which follow one another are called actions. Accord-
ingly, actions are the true subjects of poetry.20

Interestingly, Lessing next acknowledges that such distinctions are not as cut-
and-dried as this would lead us to believe. ‘‘However, bodies do not exist in space
only, but also in time. . . . On the other hand, actions cannot exist independently,
10
ut pictura musica

but must be joined to certain beings or things.’’ What appears therefore to be

an essential difference—differences of kind—turns out instead to be differences
only of degree or focus.
The need to consider the fundamental differences between the arts, here poetry
and painting,21 is for the purpose of criticism and judgment. The fact that, in Less-
ing’s view, followers of the ut pictura poesis tradition have failed to acknowledge
the fundamental difference between art forms has led to a ‘‘mania for description’’
in poetry and ‘‘a mania for allegory’’ in painting, which attempts ‘‘to make the
former a speaking picture, without actually knowing what it could and ought to
paint, and the latter a silent poem, without having considered to what degree it is
able to express general ideas without denying its true function and degenerating
into a purely arbitrary means of expression.’’22
Lessing’s project is to contain as much as it is to explain. He conflates, in other
words, evaluative issues with ontological ones. From the nature of the medium
springs the possibility of certain subjects; what can be expressed is intimately
related to ‘‘how,’’ the vehicle of expression. This assumption tends to think of
the ‘‘how’’ as fixed, for a change in ‘‘how’’ could lead to a change of subject.
The ‘‘how’’ of his particular historical moment leads Lessing to value poetry
over painting: ‘‘poetry has a wider range . . . there are beauties at its command
which painting is never able to attain,’’ a valuation that, as Mitchell argues, is
tied up with ideology, particularly at the level of gender. Painting as a silent,
beautiful art, a natural sign system, made for the eye and from bodies in space—
these are all qualities associated with femininity. Opposed to this is the eloquent,
sublime discourse of poetry, an arbitrary sign system, addressed to the ear and
mind in time—values associated with masculinity.23 In fact, Lessing’s analysis is
implicitly binary, one that cannot help but become evaluative and hierarchical,
privileging one side (poetry) over the other (painting). Value and restrictions are
inferred from the spatiotemporal distinction. The border between art forms thus
characterized must not be transgressed. Lessing condemns paintings that attempt
to present the passage of time: ‘‘It is an intrusion of the painter into the domain
of the poet, which good taste can never sanction, when the painter combines in
one and the same picture two points necessarily separate in time,’’24 and likewise
for the poet who transgresses this ‘‘natural’’ border, but in the opposite direction.
There are many such examples throughout the Laocoön, developed from the root
characterization and division of the arts on spatiotemporal lines, presenting the
distinction as not only permanent and rightful but unassailable if value is to be
maintained.
Before we return to the legacy of Lessing’s Laocoön, it is worth exploring the
issue of ‘‘essential’’ defining character in the arts, especially in music and the
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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course of their extraordinary careers may decree its return. Chéri-
Bibi after a last sigh, went on:
"I merely wanted to ask you if anyone has been here and spoken to
you of me."
"No, not during the last five years."
Chéri-Bibi remained brooding for a while.
"It's just as well. He's forgotten me," he said.
And as Chéri-Bibi's thoughts seemed to have reverted to the other
end of the world, Hilaire, in order to give him the opportunity of
coming back to him, uttered this pithy maxim:
"Ingratitude is met with everywhere and always."
"I don't expect gratitude from anybody, and I owe no gratitude to
anybody," growled Chéri-Bibi. "In this world it's each for himself and
God against us all."
Hilaire did not wince at these terrible words of blasphemy. He had so
often heard his friend "go for" heaven and earth in the most
withering language that he had made up his mind never to allow
himself to become excited over it. Moreover, during the last few
moments something attracted his attention apart from Chéri-Bibi's
outburst.
He heard hurried footsteps in the street and some one came to a
stand outside his shop. That some one brushed against the shop-
front. The footsteps were clearly not those of a woman, and thus the
person in question could not be Madame Hilaire.
He was about to get up and see for himself what was coming, when
a blow from a fist was struck on the shutters and the ominous word
was once more flung into echoes of the street: "Fatalitas!"
Chéri-Bibi sprang forward.
"It's he," he cried. "I've come in the nick of time. Is Providence this
time on my side?"
He turned to Hilaire, who gazed at him in bewilderment, quite at a
loss as to what was happening either in the house or in the street.
"Open the door and pay every attention to the man who comes in,
but don't mention that I am here."
Having said which Chéri-Bibi retreated to the dining-room.
Hilaire opened the small low door for the second time, but not
before taking from a drawer a revolver which he kept for use in case
of emergency. The Nut darted into the shop. Hilaire closed the door
and as a measure of greater precaution closed also the iron shutter.
He glanced at his strange visitor and at once felt much easier as he
saw before him the face of a scared but entirely honest man.
The new-comer breathed heavily, passing a feverish hand across his
brow, bathed in perspiration.
"Won't you sit down, Monsieur?" said Hilaire, in a tone of extreme
politeness.
The Nut took the proffered chair. He grew more self-possessed. A
smile flickered across Hilaire's face.
"You are quite out of breath. What happened to you, Monsieur?"
"Some ruffians were after me," returned the Nut. "They can't be far
away. If I had not caught sight of the light under your door, and if
you had net been sitting up so late, I don't know what would have
become of me."
He ceased speaking. Furtive steps creeping along the pavement, and
even the exchange of a few words in hushed whispers could be
heard some five paces away from them. And then a great silence
fell, but they were not deceived by it, and Hilaire said in an
undertone:
"They're still there."
"Yes, they must have seen me come in. If that's so, they won't go
away in a hurry."
"What do they want with you?"
"I can't tell you that."
"I've been too inquisitive. I apologize. I don't wish to know anything.
I am entirely at your disposal, and ready to help you to the best of
my ability. You said a word when you banged at my door which
makes me your slave."
The Nut turned red.
"Yes, fatalitas," he said in a breath.
He paused. They pricked up their ears to the night, which still
maintained its silence. After a while, not without embarrassment, the
Captain went on:
"It's a password which was given to me by a friend of mine who is
also, it seems, your friend."
"Yes, Monsieur," acquiesced Hilaire, with a bow, "a great friend; the
best, the truest of friends, and also the most unfortunate."
"I owe everything to him," said the Captain simply. "He has saved
my life again to-night."
Hilaire bowed again. Neither of them had mentioned the name of
Chéri-Bibi, but they were both thinking of him.
"I will tell you what, in the name of this friend, I ask you to do,"
went on the Nut. "You will be able to say whether it's possible."
"What is it?"
"First I must apologize for not giving you my name, and I shall be
thankful if you will not attempt to discover it."
"When you leave this place I shall forget that you ever came here."
The Nut gave Hilaire his hand.
"My friend was right in telling me that I could count on you. What
you have just said is most considerate, and I shall never forget it."
"He taught me to be considerate," sighed Hilaire. "What can I do for
you?"
"I must get away from here at the earliest moment without being
seen."
"They're waiting for you outside," objected Hilaire, indicating by a
movement of his head the street, in which some amount of stir could
still be heard.
"Yes," returned the Captain, "I should like to dodge this street when
I get away. Would that be possible?"
"Possible, but perhaps unwise. Will you stay here for a moment?"
So saying Hilaire left the shop and entered the dining-room, from
which he returned almost at once.
"My proposal is that we should take a stroll on the roofs."
"Where will they lead me?"
"Past the Rue Saint Roch and near the Hotel d'Or . . ."
The officer was already on his feet.
"I'll go with you, Monsieur."
Hilaire opened a door which gave access to a back staircase, and
they soon reached the passage leading to the servants' bedrooms.
Hilaire was carrying a lighted candle. He blew it out.
"We'd better not show a light in the attic we're going into," he
explained, "because it looks out on to the street."
"Is it empty?" asked the Captain.
"No, Monsieur. My wife, who is away this evening, locked our shop-
girl in it before she went out."
Hilaire knocked at the door.
"Who's there?" cried Zoé.
"It's me. Don't trouble. And be sure not to light the candle."
Mademoiselle Zoé as she lay in her bed turned her face to the wall
and thought to herself: "What a madman the governor is! He's going
to make another trip over the rain pipes. One fine day Madame will
find him out, and it's poor Zoé who will suffer."
Suddenly she propped herself up on her elbow.
"But you know very well that you can't come in. Madame has the
key."
"I tell you to turn your face to the wall," whispered the voice on the
landing.
And Zoé at once heard Hilaire "rummaging" with the lock. It was not
long in the doing. Zoé herself was quite astonished. She had no idea
that Hilaire possessed such a nice talent in locks.
The door opened and two men entered the room. Turn her face to
the wall as she might, Mademoiselle Zoé none the less found means
of satisfying her curiosity, thanks to a pale moonbeam which pierced
the curtain.
Her master was by this time standing at the window, which he
opened with the greatest caution and without the slightest sound.
He beckoned to the man who was with him, and himself led the way
on to the roof where the man followed him.
"There," thought Zoé, "he's got a friend with him to-night. What's
the meaning of it? Who is the man? Where does he come from?
Where's he going to?"
Young Sarah-Zoé had too great a relish for intrigue not to be
interested in the highest degree in the man. She had by now slipped
her little feet out of the bed-clothes when the door was once again
opened and a huge dark form appeared. She gave a cry of fright.
But the dark form had already thrust her back on to the bed.
"Stay where you are, if you value your skin, gypsy. You needn't be
afraid of a Romany."
"Hullo, he's one of us. Seems to know me," she thought, shivering
from head to foot.
She tried to feel reassured, but she was ill at ease. She was very
glad to see him climb on to the roof like the others.
"Good gracious," she thought, "there are plenty of people on the
balcony to-night. What a carnival on the tiles!"
She covered herself with the bed-clothes. Her little face did not pop
out again till half an hour later, when Hilaire came back, and after
closing the window threatened her with dire penalties if she did not
forget what she had seen that night.
Then he quickly went downstairs, for he heard the voice of Madame
Hilaire, who had already come back from her mother.
Next morning as Zoé was helping her master to lay out the goods for
sale in the shop window, she saw an officer stop and approach
Hilaire, and as she had sharp ears she caught the words:
"You acted last night like a man of courage and you saved my life.
We shall meet again, Monsieur."
"Whenever you like," returned Hilaire. "My shop is always open
except after midday on Sundays. Every evening from five to seven I
have a little game of cards in the café round the corner. There's a
private room for a chat. I shall always be glad to be of service to
you." And as a new customer came up to him he added:
"And the next thing, please?"
The officer apparently did not require anything else, for he left the
quarter, without delay, stepped into a taxi, and was driven to the
railway station.

CHAPTER XIV
 THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

Some hours later Captain d'Haumont was back again in the de la

Boulays' country house.
He had left it with the firm determination never to return to it
whatever it might cost him. And now he was strolling once more
through the avenues of the park with a secret satisfaction which he
made no attempt to conceal. He must have been impelled by a
powerful motive, doubtless, to set at naught so quickly a line of
conduct which he had ruthlessly marked out for himself, but it was a
motive which, in all sincerity, he had no cause to regret.
It would have needed very little persuasion to induce Captain
d'Haumont to confess that he blessed the startling occurrences the
outcome of which was that he beheld once more the faces and
places which filled so large a part in his heart.
An imperative duty impelled him to cross that garden gate. He had
nothing to reproach himself with. Treason lay concealed in that
house; and he had to unmask it.
Since he had all but fallen a prey to the mysterious gang who had
pursued him so far as the neighborhood of the Hotel d'Or, the
Captain was convinced that the scheme which his villainous
aggressors were carrying out was planned at M. de la Boulays'
house. It was the only place where the hidden enemy might have
overheard something to indicate the importance of the secret
mission with which he had been charged. In a word, Captain
d'Haumont believed that the Château de la Boulays was the center
of a spy system. He called to mind that, as he left M. de la Boulays'
study the night before, he almost stumbled over Schwab, whose
attitude had always seemed suspicious. Some few minutes later, at
the moment of leaving the house, he caught a glimpse of two dark
forms in conversation in the park, one of whom was undoubtedly
Schwab and the other curiously suggestive of de Gorbio. The
incident had made no great impression on him at the time, but how
prominently it stood out in his thoughts to-day!
He reached the house after lunch. The men were at the other side of
the park practicing firing with Count de Gorbio. From the sounds of
the shots and the exclamations which followed he gathered that he
was quite close to the butts. He heard the voice of Françoise:
"Well done, Count. That was a wonderful shot. What a pity the
Boches are not up against your pistol!"
Françoise was moving away from the group where the Count was
"showing off" his prowess when her eyes fell upon Didier. She gave
a start and grew pale. Nevertheless she continued her way towards
the house as though she had not seen him.
M. de la Boulays was not less astonished than his daughter at the
sudden and entirely unexpected apparition of the Captain, and
though the latter did not express any desire to see him alone, he
realized that he must have some urgent communication to make to
him connected with the important mission with which the Captain
had been entrusted the night before. In the meantime he took his
cue from the Captain's attitude and was content to wait.
Count de Gorbio treated the new-comer with icy politeness, for he
was by no means pleased to see him again.
Several more shots were fired which served to display the Count's
wonderful skill. He was congratulated by all and they returned to the
house. Didier had declined to take part in the contest when the
pistols were offered to him, under the pretence of a weakness in his
right arm. He had no wish to run the risk of being humiliated before
de Gorbio, and when he looked at him it was certainly not at a
cardboard target that he longed to fire!
As soon as they were in the house M. de la Boulays went up to
Didier and said quietly:
"I presume you have something to tell me. Captain."
"Yes; something serious."
"Would you care to go upstairs to my study?"
"No; don't let any one think we're having a serious talk. We're being
spied upon."
They went on the terrace while one party was arranging a game of
poker with the Count, and another party was making up a game of
bridge in which M. de la Boulays was to join.
"Let me know when you want me," he said. And, turning to Didier,
asked in a somewhat nonplussed tone: "Well, what's it all about?"
"Monsieur de la Boulays, there's a spy in this house."
As he heard those words M. de la Boulays could not restrain himself.
"De Gorbio was right!" he exclaimed.
The result was that before Captain d'Haumont could say another
word de Gorbio, who had caught M. de la Boulays' cry, came up and
asked for an explanation. But d'Haumont became frigidly silent, and
M. de la Boulays appeared to be extremely perplexed by the
Captain's attitude. The Count at once apologized for interposing so
clumsily in a private conversation.
"I thought I heard you say 'de Gorbio was right.' I see that I made a
mistake," and he walked away in spite of M. de la Boulays'
protestations.
"I think you might have explained matters before the Count," said M.
de la Boulays. "This morning he persuaded me to dismiss the man-
servant whom you never liked and whom he caught he tells me,
eavesdropping."
"Isn't Schwab here now?" cried d'Haumont. "Well, I'm very sorry to
hear it. We might have brought him to book or caught him in the
act. . . . Now it's too late."
"In any case we can't blame Count de Gorbio."
"I'm not blaming him. I'm only sorry that, owing to the haste with
which he has had him turned out, Schwab can continue his
treachery elsewhere."
"I think you are a little unfair to Count de Gorbio," said M. de la
Boulays. "But never mind that, tell me what happened to you to put
you in such a state."
Didier told his story in a few words without entering into particulars
of the attack on him, and passing over in silence, of course, the
incident at Hilaire's grocery stores, the escape by the roofs, and the
descent into a timber merchant's yard, while his adversaries were
waiting for him in the Rue Saint Roch. After all, was not the fact that
he had brought his errand to a successful issue the main thing?
Finally, he told M. de la Bourlays how he had found himself face to
face with Schwab the night before, when he left the study, but he
did not feel called upon to mention that afterwards he caught a
glimpse of the Count, in the park, in conversation with the man.
After M. de la Boulays had heard Didier's story he regretted less than
ever having got rid of Schwab—a point of view which was not shared
by d'Haumont.
Just then some one came up to fetch M. de la Boulays for his bridge
party. He left the Captain after making him promise that he would
stay to dinner. The latter could not well refuse the invitation, for he
had no conceivable pretext for leaving the house before the hour at
which the train departed by which he would return to Paris.
He did not see Mademoiselle de la Boulays again during the whole of
the afternoon, but half an hour before dinner, while he was on the
terrace lost in sorrowful musings, swinging on a rocking-chair and
smoking a cigar, he saw her coming towards him. He threw away his
cigar and stopped the movement of his chair.
He saw from the wistful and lovelorn look in her eyes that she was
suffering no less than he, and he hated himself for his
powerlessness to combat their twofold misery save to disappear
from sight.
She came to him in all the simplicity of her soul, such as he had
known her when he recovered consciousness after his sufferings in
hospital, when she supported his first steps on his return to health
and strength, and when she turned her beloved face to him in full
confidence.
They made their way down into the park.
"My father tells me that last night again your life was in great
danger," she said.
Her voice was shaken by intense emotion, and he saw a tear spring
from her beautiful eyes. He forgot the infamous past and the
impossible future. He lived through an exquisite moment. He was
loved at that hour and in that place, and straightway he separated
that hour and place from every other hour and place. The arm of his
beloved trembled against his. He forgot everything. He was a happy
man for a space, and he lifted his eyes to heaven in a frenzy of
gratitude.
What did he say next? What words had he uttered? They could only
have been trivial, since they had no connection with what was
passing in his heart. He told the story, perhaps, of the night before;
he spoke, perhaps, of other things. What he said was of no
consequence. His words fell in silence, and they could not come
between their twin souls, responsive only to the mute rhythm of
their love.
How, in that moment of exaltation, could he see behind him a rival
whose eyes were gleaming with hatred? Count de Gorbio stood
beside M. de la Boulays on the terrace, and what he saw and heard
made him swell with suppressed anger.
He saw Françoise walking arm in arm with Didier and heard M. de la
Boulays telling him that it was in vain that he had endeavored to
induce his daughter to fix a date for the marriage.
"But I say, what did she reply?"
"She made no reply at all. She left me to meet Captain d'Haumont."
The Count could not repress a gesture of fury. Nevertheless the two
men ceased talking, for the Captain and Françoise, summoned by
the dinner bell, were coming up the steps to the terrace.
D'Haumont was placed next to Françoise at dinner, and the Count
was seated opposite them. He at once turned the conversation to
the subject of gold-diggers, and the hazards which attended their
enterprises, and, in particular, the unfortunate necessity which
forced persons who were out there to mix with the lowest type of
adventurers.
"That's true," agreed d'Haumont, without betraying the least
agitation. "Count de Gorbio knows the manners and customs of the
country as if he had lived there."
The conversation could not continue for long in such a strain without
the fear of some altercation arising during the dinner. The enmity of
the two men was so obvious that the guests exchanged astonished
glances. What were they about to witness?
M. de la Boulays was conscious of the danger and did not conceal
his anxiety. Françoise, on the other hand, maintained her
composure. She asked Count de Gorbio to tell them in his usual
charming manner some of his theatrical anecdotes, which would
change the subject from that of spies and savages.
"For my part, I wish to be enlightened," protested the Count. "One
never knows what may happen in life. Is it true that you went out
there without a sou and came back as rich as a nabob?"
Before Didier had time to reply Françoise took it upon herself to
interpose.
"Captain d'Haumont is a poorer man now than he was before he
went out. He gave all his fortune in addition to shedding some of his
blood for France."
A murmur of approval passed through the room. It was as much as
the guests could do not to break forth into applause.
"Captain d'Haumont is a hero and the most disinterested man of my
acquaintance," rejoined the Count. "I am very pleased to number
myself among his friends."
This sudden and unexpected change of front did not deceive any
one. Nevertheless it put an end, for the time being, to a situation
which was one of great delicacy for M. and Mlle. de la Boulays,
whom every one was watching. It was easy to understand the cause
of the quarrel, and the reason of the animosity which had brought
about a contest between the two men.
M. de la Boulays himself grew increasingly uncomfortable. He could
not make out his daughter's attitude. She had suddenly shown a
violent hostility to the Count, and the problem for him was why, if
she were animated by such feelings, she had bestowed her hand
upon him.
He determined to get her to unburden herself to him, for he was an
extremely worthy man, and though his interests were bound up in
certain business matters with those of de Gorbio, he would not have
seen his daughter unhappy on any account. And, moreover, if she
were in love with d'Haumont she had but to confess it.
When they rose from the table to retire to the drawing-room, Mlle.
de la Boulays took d'Haumont's arm and asked him to go with her
into the park for a breath of fresh air of which she stood in need.
She did not omit, as she left the room, to apologize gracefully to the
Count for monopolizing the attention of "his friend."
"He is my patient," she said, "and I want to give him my last
injunctions."
"Do you know that you were very disagreeable to my future
husband?" she said when they were alone. "If you don't like him, it
would be a mistake not to tell me so seeing that I accepted him on
your advice! But nothing is lost yet. There is still time to choose a
different one if this one does not please you!" She did not give him
time to reply. "And now," she added quickly, "you must go and say
good-by to my father and start off if you want to catch your train.
The small racing-car will take you to the station."
It was she now who was urging him to depart, eager to see him
leave the Château. Obviously she dreaded any sort of encounter
between the two men. But at that moment Count de Gorbio
appeared before them.
"M. de la Boulays wishes to speak to you, Mademoiselle. He asked
me to come and tell you so." And he added in a somewhat sharper
tone, "You must forgive me for disturbing, in this way, your last
conversation."
"But you are not disturbing it, I assure you, my dear Count. Be kind
enough, Captain d'Haumont, to take me to my father."
The Count let them pass out of sight. He was seeing red.
A quarter of an hour later d'Haumont left the house in the racing car.
A break-down occurred on the way, and he reached the station only
to see the express "on the move." The next train did not leave until
the following morning, and he put up at an hotel in the town. He
had not been in his room for more than five minutes when a knock
came at the door. He opened it.
It proved to be Count de Gorbio, who bowed politely and apologized
for disturbing him at such an hour, but he was convinced that when
the Captain knew the reason of his haste, he would not bear him
any ill-will. The matter in question was this: Count de Gorbio had
always held that a man's honor was the most valuable thing in the
world, and as his honor had been affronted by Captain d'Haumont's
remarks, he had come without delay to demand satisfaction.
Captain d'Haumont listened to him with absolute composure. He
answered that the Count's errand greatly astonished him, for he was
not aware in what way he could have caused him any personal
annoyance.
"There have been many things, Monsieur, which I do not feel called
upon to explain, but among others you used a certain phrase about
adventurers which you would not have finished if I had not been
held back by respect for my host."
"Monsieur," broke in d'Haumont, in a frigid tone, "the remark was
made by you and I merely replied to it. But it will serve. You want a
duel. Very well, you shall have one when peace is signed. Until then
my life belongs to my country."
"I quite expected that excuse. It's easy to say that. We don't know
when peace will be signed. We may both of us be old men by then.
Hang it all, the armistice is good enough for me, and I am so
constituted that the thought of holding over indefinitely the
remembrance of so unpardonable an affront, makes me furious. I
want to kill you at once, Captain d'Haumont."
"I say again that for the time being my life belongs to my country."
"Mlle. de la Boulays told us that you had shed half your blood for
your country. I claim the other half. When a man knows that he
cannot fight, or chooses not to fight, he behaves himself accordingly,
and keeps to himself the ill opinion that he may have formed of his
neighbor."
Captain d'Haumont did not answer the Count. He pointed to the
door.
Then Count de Gorbio, with a slow movement, drew off a heavy
motor-glove and struck him with it across the face.
The scene changed in a flash. Didier took the Count in his
formidable hands, lifted him, swung him, and was about to break his
head against the wall when the Count, in his terror, bellowed the one
thing that could save him.
"Coward, afraid of my pistol."
Didier let him drop.
"Very well," he said, "I'll fight you."
During this time Mlle. de la Boulays was searching the Château for
de Gorbio, and was in a fever of anxiety as to what had become of
him.
She learned that he had set out in one of the motor-cars with the
hood up. M. de la Boulays was in his study, unconscious of what was
happening. At that juncture the small racing car returned, and the
chauffeur told Françoise that Captain d'Haumont had missed the
train and had ordered him to drive to an hotel.
She sprang into the car, a prey to the gloomiest forebodings. It
seemed a forgone conclusion to her that de Gorbio, furious at the
manner in which she had openly slighted him and with Didier for his
attitude towards him, was in pursuit with a view of challenging him.
The deed, perhaps, was already done. Her memory harked back to
the Count's wonderful prowess with the pistol, and she shuddered.
Besides, she had learned with certainty that his car had preceded
her by an hour. . . .
Her feeling of anguish increased every moment almost to the point
of suffocation. She was convinced that the two men were in the very
act of fighting. They could not even wait until the next morning!
When she reached the hotel and discovered that Didier was in his
room safe and sound, she wept tears of joy. She ran up to his room
and knocked wildly at the door. The Captain himself opened it.
"You're going to fight a duel," she burst out, addressing him in the
familiar second person which spoke volumes for their love which,
when they were alone, had never been in question. They both
remained as motionless as statues. "Forgive me," she went on, while
a deep blush mantled her cheeks. "Oh, forgive me." And she sank
into a chair, sobbing aloud.
"Yes, Françoise, it's true. I'm fighting a duel to-morrow morning."
"Oh, good heavens!" she cried. And then, with a look of dismay:
"What are you fighting with? Pistols? You saw what that wretched
man can do with a pistol. He will kill you."
"Yes," answered Didier simply, transfigured by an immense joy. "Yes,
he will kill me. . . . There's no way out of it. But I shall die the
happiest of men because you came to me."
She rose from her chair and took his hands in hers.
"You will not fight. I don't want it and you don't want it. You must
not fight. You are a soldier. In war time a soldier fights only against
the enemy. You would be guilty of an act of treason if you were to
fight. No, no; you will not fight."
"But, my dear girl, I said all that to him and he struck me in the
face."
"He laid hands on you! He dared to strike you, and is still alive!"
"Why, you see, Françoise, you, no more than I, would consent to live
after that. No, my love, he is still alive because, when I was about to
smash his head against the wall, he taunted me with being afraid of
his pistol. You see, yourself, that I must fight him."
"No, no; never. . . . The man is a murderer."
"We should have fought before now if we could have found any
seconds. We had to postpone the meeting. He is taking everything
on himself. Both of us will have the necessary seconds. And now go
back to your father, and keep silent about the whole matter. I have
an hour left in which to write to you—to write to you at great
length."
"Why write to me? Why do you suddenly change your tone? Why do
you again assume the coldness which has already caused me so
much pain? You have but to say one word to me—the word which
you have never yet said."
"It is to tell you why I have never said that word that I want to write
to you."
"And afterwards you'll fight?"
"I shall fight."
"That means you don't love me, Didier. Alas, my love, you have
never loved me. And yet you know that I have loved you from the
first day that I saw you . . . and you have done nothing but make
me weep."
"That's true," returned Didier. "But you are so good that I am certain
you will forgive me."
He sat down and, leaning with his elbows on the table, placed his
hands before his face as if to shut out the vision of her for the last
time. When he looked up again she was gone.
Then he began to write. His letter was a confession and a
testament; one long wail of sorrow and love.
At daybreak, when d'Haumont entered the forest, Count de Gorbio
and the four seconds whom he had undertaken to obtain were
already waiting for him and he had the sensation of being face to
face with a firing-party.
Those four men—the seconds—wore an ominous look, as if they
knew that they were about to engage in an ugly business. The duel
was occurring in such peculiar circumstances that de Gorbio must
have had some difficulty in finding accomplices. It was not a
pleasant sight for any one, except a German, to see a man shoot
down a Captain in the French army, wounded in the war and not a
little famous on account of his deeds. Count de Gorbio must have
had to pay them a good price to induce them to act as seconds.
Nevertheless, the seconds, anticipating some future unpleasantness,
were anxious that the duel should be fought strictly in accordance
with the rules. They expressed regret that d'Haumont had not
brought a case of pistols with him, but as he accepted, without
demur, the pistols belonging to his opponent, they decided to go on.
Captain d'Haumont's seconds took the greatest care to see that the
weapons were properly loaded. They drew lots and fate decreed that
one of his seconds should take charge of the combat, and he offered
the Captain a few words of advice.
It was obvious that he was quite in his element. He turned down the
thin line of white collar which could be seen above the blue of
d'Haumont's jacket. He counselled him to stand sideways under
cover of his right arm, and to bend it over his chest so that it might
serve as a shield; and to fire standing in that position when the
command was given, so that Count de Gorbio would not have time
to take aim between the words, "One, two, three, and fire!" Of
course, such precipitation would mean that he would be firing a little
at random, but it was his only chance of saving his life, for there was
no use hiding the fact that if Count de Gorbio were given time to
take aim d'Haumont would be a dead man.
The second did not express in so many words an opinion which was
shared by every one else, but he clearly hinted as much.
The seconds counted the paces. The adversaries were placed face to
face. After the usual preliminaries, the word of command, "Fire!"
rang out. Captain d'Haumont did not display any undue haste, but
gave Count de Gorbio his full time and fired abstractedly, almost
simultaneously with him.
He had recommended his soul to God and thought of Françoise for
the last time. He expected to be struck to the ground. What was his
stupefaction to see Count de Gorbio turn right round. The Count
swayed for a second and then fell his length with his face on the
sward. The seconds rushed up, followed by a gentleman whom the
Captain had not previously observed, and who, it seemed, was the
doctor.
At that moment a woman's cry was heard, and Françoise appeared
on the scene. She came hurrying up apparently to prevent the duel,
and hearing the shots, she was shrieking all the more despairingly,
feeling certain that she had arrived too late. It is only in fiction and
plays that the heroine can calculate her time with such nicety that
she appears on the ground at the psychological moment and glides
in front of a pistol to receive the shot which was intended for the
man she loves.
Nevertheless, when Mlle. de la Boulays had made sure that the body
which lay on the grass was the Count's, and that d'Haumont was
uninjured, she in no way regretted her late arrival. She flung herself
into Didier's arms.
"It is the judgment of God!"
These words coming from the beloved lips made an immense
impression on d'Haumont, and affected him to a greater degree than
the duel itself.
"The judgment of God!" It was true that God had been on his side in
the battle, so that he had miraculously escaped the Count's unerring
pistol, while the Count was struck down by a bullet which had no
chance of hitting him!
It was fated, therefore, that he should live. It was fated that he
should love. It was shown that he had sufficiently suffered; made
sufficient atonement. God, by removing that man from his path, had
thrown that splendid girl into his arms, and she alone uttered the
only words that were able to decide his destiny.
The judgment of God!
It was an inspiring thought and overwhelmed him with an exultation
which may easily be imagined; while Françoise's tears of joy, the
clasp of her arms, the wonderful elation which seized him as he felt
that he was on the threshold of a new life, illumined by love, took
him out of himself—and he listened but absent-mindedly to the
remarks of the seconds who were telling him that Count de Gorbio
was not dead, but that he was not very far from it.
They raised their hats, and he returned the salute without quite
knowing what he was about. And he allowed himself to be dragged
away by Françoise.
Some weeks later she led him to the altar. The marriage made a
great stir. It was one of the smartest among the war-weddings. As
the wedding party emerged into the church square, bathed in the
warm light, it was as though the sun of victory had risen that
morning expressly to shine on Captain d'Haumont and his radiant
bride.
They descended the main staircase amidst a murmur of admiration
from a fashionably dressed crowd. As in the case of all marriages of
wealthy people, a few eager beggars and down-at-heel loafers
congregated here and there on the pavement. One of them climbed
the gilded gate in order to see better, and his movements were like
the contortions of a crab. Standing near him a squalid-looking
peddler of rugs, carrying his bundle of trash on his shoulders, stared
at the procession with not less interest. Captain d'Haumont was in
the seventh heaven and had no eyes for earthly sights, nor did he
hear the words that were spoken in an undertone by an over-
dressed man to his companion, who might have been a sheriff's
clerk and looked rather shabby:
"Well, what do you think about it, Joker?"
"I think he is now ripe, Parisian."

CHAPTER XV

THE HONEYMOON

The moon—Captain and Madame d'Haumont's honeymoon—rose

with its soft refulgence over the silver waves at Villefranche, at the
extremity of Cape Ferrat, between Nice and Monte Carlo. It was
here, in the seclusion of the fragrant gardens of "Thalassa," the
splendid villa which M. de la Boulays possessed on the azure coast of
the Mediterranean, that they had hidden their great and new-found
happiness.
Leaning on the beflowered balcony the happy couple listened in
silence to the moaning of the sea breaking itself at the foot of the
hills which watched over this enchanted bay. The dark mass of two
vessels lay heavily asleep on their gleaming bed in the beautiful
night.
Only the faint splash of two oars causing a light swirl of glistening
foam could be heard from the roadstead, and a boat passed so near
as to be almost at their feet.
"How pleasant it would be to have a row on the sea at this delightful
hour," murmured Françoise.
She had scarcely given expression to the wish when Didier hailed the
fisherman who was rowing the boat and asked him to wait. They
made their way down the steps which led to the beach, and the
man, having consented by a gesture to take them with him, they
were soon gliding over the surface of the waves, which were flowing
out to the headland of Cape Ferrat.
"Do you often fish at this hour?" questioned Françoise. "I believe I
caught sight of you yesterday pulling round the point."
The man answered only with a grunt.
"Certainly our sailor is no gossip," said Françoise in a whisper to
Didier.
They did not again speak to him. They even completely forgot his
existence. Didier's arm gently stole round Françoise's waist. Her
head lay on his shoulder. A soft and scented breeze was wafted from
the gardens at Saint Jean and the terraces at Beaulieu. Their lips
met in the glad night as though they were alone.
The uncouth fisherman, a few feet away from them, was deemed as
of no importance. Moreover he looked half asleep as he bent over
his oars, drowsing in the huge muffler which covered his face. But
the man was not slumbering, and in the innermost recesses of his
mind he thought: "Love each other. Rejoice like children who are
free from care while Chéri-Bibi keeps watch. Let nothing disturb the
happiness which you have wrested from fate. I, too, have known
those divine moments. I, too, have known what it is to be kissed by
a beloved wife. I, too, have felt a beautiful form yield in my arms. I,
too, have heard a lover's sighs. Alas, there is an end to all things!
Make haste! The most delightful nights are not far distant from the
blackest chaos. The abyss lies under your feet. Forget it! Forget it.
Nut, as long as you can! I have come from a great distance to
remove from your path the cowardly forms clinging to your shadow
who are lying in wait for you as for a quarry. Pray to your God in
whom you believe, because your cup of happiness is full, that I may
save you from evil before even you suspect its presence. Alas,
nothing comes more swiftly in the world than misfortune. You are
right to forget it lest your fondest kisses be fraught with bitter
tears."
Thus Chéri-Bibi's thoughts flowed on in the lyrical and affected style
which was usual with him when the occasion did not call upon him
to express himself in the most frightful slang.
Those who have known as he knew, both sides of life as a result of
complications which they have not sought, and which have sent
them astray from their early path, find themselves again with a
suddenness which cannot surprise them, either with a heart full of
the joys of former times, or else wearing a hideous mask under
which Fatality endeavors to suppress their former selves without
entirely succeeding.
Chéri-Bibi half saw what was passing in the Nut's elated mind. He
was at that moment entirely transported with gratitude to
Providence, the Giver of life and death, who had imposed on him
such sore trials and made such splendid amends.
This secret pæan to the mighty spirit of goodness rose all the higher,
inasmuch as the Nut could consider himself henceforward safe from
a recurrence of his evil fortune. As far as the world was concerned
the Nut was dead, Chéri-Bibi thought. The newspapers, some
months before, had published the glad news:
"The tragedy of the murder of a well-known banker by Raoul de
Saint Dalmas," it was reported, "is now doubtless forgotten by the
public. It may be stated that the prisoner succeeded in escaping
from the convict settlement, but the Penitentiary Authorities have
been able to satisfy themselves beyond any doubt that the miscreant
perished in the primeval forest like so many other convicts who have
attempted the same venture."
No endeavor would be made to search further for him, and since he
had learned from the same source, on his arrival in Europe, that the
men who in Cayenne were called the Burglar, the Parisian, the Caid
and the Joker had been recaptured, together with the notorious
Chéri-Bibi, he had every reason to believe that the past contained no
menace for him.
He was confident, moreover, that he owed his perfect security to
Chéri-Bibi, and at those moments when his thoughts reverted to
him, he vowed an even deeper gratitude to him.
"Be happy, Nut! You will learn all too soon, if you are to learn it, that
your old companions in bondage escaped once again after four years
of imprisonment, showing greater cunning this time, for they
managed to return to France, and were present at your wedding.
Oh, if you had known it! How you would have invoked in your
prayers the demon of darkness who alone can save you, and whom,
in the natural selfishness of your happiness, you no longer wished
even to remember."
*****
Françoise loved adornment and admiration, and Didier was
delighted, for he thought, with some reason, that a woman without
elegance and style was a woman without charm.
During the early months of the war, Mlle. de la Boulays restricted
herself with a veritable enthusiasm to the greatest simplicity in
dress. But, in truth, could she claim that she was devoted to her Red
Cross costume solely because it served to remind her of her duties
to humanity? Did she entirely ignore the fact that it suited her to
perfection?
Her engagement, and then her marriage, which was a society event,
afforded her more than a sufficient reason for returning to her
former tastes, so that she found herself once more devoting herself
to matters of toilet and dress. The fact, moreover, in no way
detracted from her more solid qualities.
Captain d'Haumont was delighted to accompany his wife when she
went shopping or visited her dressmaker. And when they were in
Nice, after sauntering through the Promenade des Anglais, he never
failed to bring her back to the verdant avenue where behind the
great shop-fronts bloomed the latest fashions.
On that day they went to Violette's to see a certain dress in white
voile embroidered with pearls upon which Françoise had been
casting longing eyes. The elder of the sisters, Violette, had just
returned from their principal branch in Paris, bringing with her every
kind of fashionable wonder. Françoise had not visited Violette's
during the war. But she knew the two sisters well, and she was quite
surprised to see the elder one put out her hand to Didier with a
pleasant smile. So Didier also knew her! So Didier used to visit the
millinery shops before his marriage! With a charming pout, lifting in
mock-seriousness a threatening finger, she remarked upon the fact.
"Don't scold us, Madame," said the elder Mlle. Violette with a smile.
"It's a great secret between Captain d'Haumont and me. But as it's
the secret of a good action, you must not ask me to tell you about
it."
"I insist on knowing what it is," said Françoise gaily. "A husband
ought not to have any secrets from his wife."
"After all, you're quite right, Madame, and well . . . the secret is . . ."
At that juncture a girl appeared from the other end of the shop. She
was wearing an exquisite dress which Françoise at once gazed upon
enraptured. She did not even bestow a glance at the face of the
wearer. A mannequin in the flesh means little more to the customers
than a mannequin in dummy.
Nevertheless she was obliged to take stock of that handsome face
with its refined and aristocratic outline, for the girl, catching sight of
Captain d'Haumont, uttered a cry of joy, and blushing with pleasure
went quickly up to him with outstretched hand. And then, doubtless
feeling that her gesture was indiscreet, she stopped short and
murmured, almost stammering:
"Oh, Captain d'Haumont! . . . How is it you're here?"
"What about you?" returned d'Haumont. "Have you been in Nice
long?"
"I brought her with me from Paris yesterday," interposed Mlle.
Violette. "We needed a few mannequins, and I took her away from
the cash desk so as to have her taught a new business here. She
does all that we want. We are very pleased with our favorite,
Captain d'Haumont."
"My dear," said Captain d'Haumont, turning to his wife, who did not
know what to say or what to think, and who remained standing
somewhat nonplussed by the mystery, "I want you to be very nice to
Mlle. Giselle who is quite worthy of it. It's a story which I will tell you
later."
"A very pathetic story, Madame," interposed Mlle. Violette, "and one
that redounds to your husband's credit."
Giselle bowed gracefully to Madame d'Haumont. "I will try to
deserve your kindness, Madame and Monsieur," she said with great
simplicity. "When my mother and I heard of Captain d'Haumont's
marriage we both of us prayed for your happiness."
"She is delightful, this child," said Françoise, as she shook her
warmly by the hand. "And how pretty she is!" Then, turning to her
husband with an adorable pout:
"I don't know what you did to make them so grateful to you, but you
know how to choose the people to whom to do good turns, my dear
Didier."
When they left the shop Françoise, who was agog with the greatest
curiosity, asked him what it all meant.
"Be quick, tell me. You know that I am jealous, you brigand."
D'Haumont was much amused by her impatience. He assumed an air
of detachment.
"My dear, it's a secret which belongs to that young girl," he said. "I
really don't know if I can——"
"Oh, you're making game of me! That's not the old Didier. Think of
the confidence that I have in you. We go into a shop and the first
mannequin that we see throws herself into your arms and I don't
scratch her eyes out."
"That would have been a pity, for they are very nice eyes," said
Didier.
"Yes, she has extremely nice blue eyes and an expression of gentle
sadness which haunts one, it's true. Oh, you're an excellent judge. I
congratulate you! All the same, you must admit that I am a good
sort. Do I know what you did before our marriage?"
"Françoise!" rapped out Didier in a muffled voice. The word was
uttered in such a tone of reproach that Françoise stopped teasing
him. She saw that he was very pale and painfully upset.
"Good gracious, I didn't know that I should be hurting your feelings
like that."
He took her hand and pressed it gently.
"My dearest," he said, "I will tell you all about her, but never forget
that since the day that I first saw you, there's never been any other
woman in the world for me but you."
"I believe you, my Didier."
Nothing more was said while they remained among the fashionably
dressed crowd which assembles between eleven o'clock and midday
on the Promenade de la Baie des Anges. But as soon as they were
alone on the terrace, which was usually deserted at that time, and
which, skirting the Château, leads to the harbor, Didier told
Françoise what he knew of Giselle and how he came to know her.
The incident occurred on an occasion when he was home on leave.
He was "pulling himself together" from the fatigues of the front in a
small flat which he had taken on his arrival in Paris. It was in the
Luxembourg quarter, facing the gardens, of which he was very fond,
and which served to remind him of the happiest days of his
boyhood.
One day as he left his flat he was arrested by a most mournful
procession which was descending from the attic above. Some poor
devil was being taken to his last resting place. A young girl was
walking behind the coffin. She was in tears, and was so weak that
obviously she had the greatest difficulty to hold herself upright. She
was alone or almost alone. Didier offered her his assistance. She
clung to his arm in her distress with an ingenuous confidence that
deeply touched him. He took her thus to the cemetery, and brought
her back home again.
It was not until they were in the house that she seemed to notice
the assistance which a stranger had rendered her.
"Oh, monsieur, it's very good of you," she said, and as they were
now indoors she made her escape and went upstairs to her attic.
Captain d'Haumont questioned the porter's wife. He learned that
Giselle's father had suffered from an illness—consumption—which
was practically incurable. Thus he had not been able to work for two
years, and her mother was crippled, so that the young girl could only
maintain her unhappy family by the most grinding toil. Scarcely
being able to leave them, she was forced to wear herself out with
needlework at home, and earned barely enough to keep the wolf
from the door.
D'Haumont knew the elder of the Violette sisters, for one of her
nephews, a second lieutenant, had served under him; and amid the
dangers of the campaign they had struck up a friendship. He called
upon this worthy lady and asked her if she could find a situation for
an honest girl who would be worthy of her trust. Mlle. Violette, as it
happened, had a vacancy for a cashier. And that was how Giselle
came to enter one of the principal dressmaking establishments in
Paris, and her mother and herself to be extricated from poverty. In
the course of a year, assisted by her youth, Giselle won back her
health. In a word, she blossomed forth into the beautiful young girl
whom Françoise had just seen. Mlle. Violette, realizing how graceful
she was, sometimes took her away from the cash desk and dressed
her as her most valuable mannequin, for she set off to advantage
their most sensational "confections."
"And now, my dear Françoise, you know as much as I do about
Giselle."
"You always will be the best of men," returned Françoise,
affectionately pressing his arm. "Men are only as good as that in
popular novels and plays," she added with an arch smile.
"You are laughing at me," said the Nut in a tone of surprise, slightly
vexed. But she grew entirely serious again.
"I adore you, my Didier."
They retraced their steps, for it was now lunch time. As they turned
round they almost ran into a singular-looking person, with a copper-
colored skin, and eyes devoid of eyebrows but protected from the
glare of the sun by large yellow glasses. This peculiar individual was
dressed entirely in white linen; and he wore white shoes and a gray
bowler hat. Didier could not help giving a start when his eyes fell
upon him.
"How very much like Yoyo he is!" he said to himself.
But the idea no sooner flashed upon him than he realized how
ridiculous and unpardonable it was to let his thoughts wander back
to the men and things of the primeval forest while walking on the
Promenade des Anglais.
"Did you notice that man?" asked Françoise, laughing. "There's an
eccentric for you! Do you know who he is? From what I hear, he is a
genuine redskin, a celebrated surgeon-dentist from Chicago who has
just opened a consulting-room in Nice. How would you like to have a
redskin as your dentist? Personally, I should be afraid of his sending
me to sleep and then scalping me. Madame d'Erlande told me, the
other day, that the women here are crazy about him, and that he
has already secured the smartest people in the foreign colony as his
patients."
Captain d'Haumont smiled and turned round to have another look at
him. The man was still walking some twenty paces behind them,
smoking a cigarette.
A few days later a charitable fête was held in Cimiez, in the beautiful
gardens of the Château de Valrose, standing on the hills which tower
above Nice. Madame d'Erlande was one of the chief organizers of
the fête, and she invited Françoise, whom she had known since she
was a little girl, and for whom she had always shown a great
affection, to take charge of a stall. Françoise could not well refuse.
Didier went with her. He allowed her to sell his choicest tobacco with
all the reckless and charming freedom which the holder of a tobacco
stall is expected to show in an affair of the sort.
He wandered among the clumps of trees, strolled through the sham
Roman ruins, and drew near and entered the Château de Valrose
almost at the same time as the redskin, who was surrounded by a
regular "court" of smart women. He knew the man's name now, for
it was to be heard on every hand. He called himself Herbert Ross.
They went into the theater at the same time. The surgeon-dentist
from Chicago took a seat in front of him, next to a woman whose
appearance seemed to be familiar to him. She chattered incessantly
to the redskin and did her utmost to arouse his interest. But with his
usual unruffled calm he replied to her only in monosyllables. That
was his method. Moreover, it was stated that he could only speak a
black man's broken lingo.
At that juncture a celebrated Russian diva sang Gluck's "Alceste."
She secured a great triumph, and was followed by sundry
instrumental pieces on the piano, harp and violin. Finally it was
announced that the celebrated Nina Noha would appear in her
character dances.
Didier gave a start when he heard her name. He had often seen
mention of her in the newspapers since his return to France. He was
fully aware that the dancer, was still much courted, or at least that
the fascination which the great public in Paris found in her who used
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